The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been approved as a clearing member by the Board of ICE Trust, the clearing house for credit default swaps (CDS) operated by IntercontinentalExchange.
Operational as of 18 May, RBS joins 10 initial clearing members of ICE Trust, and is the first new member since the clearing house launched in March.
ICE Trust is currently expanding its services to include buy-side clearing, which will provide for margin segregation and account portability to firms who are not direct clearing members. ICE Trust expects to make these enhanced risk protections available in the coming weeks.
For the week ended 15 May 2009, ICE Trust cleared USD223 billion in notional value, Since launch, ICE Trust has cleared 6,599 transactions, totaling USD586 billion of notional value, and resulting in open interest of USD103 billion. During the last clearing cycle, ICE Trust added Series 8 and Series 9 CDX contracts, which accounted for approximately 76% of the week’s cleared volume.
“ICE Trust was designed as an open platform, with membership available to qualified market participants who meet the clearing house’s rigorous financial, operating and risk management criteria,” says Dirk Pruis, president of ICE Trust. “We welcome RBS in our continued efforts to bring transparency and stability to the vital CDS markets, and we look forward to working with new dealer and buy-side participants.”
“We are working closely with applicant clearing firms and have completed several weeks of testing,” says Paul Swann, president of ICE Clear Europe. “We remain on track to clear iTraxx and European reference entities ahead of the Commission’s July deadline.”
L.D.